nvestigative
reporting is to journalism what theoretical research is to science,
having the potential to present new realities and shatter old paradigms
 how people see and understand the world around them  which, in turn,
can transform politics.

That is why investigative journalism is so
important to the health of a democracy. A dramatic set of new facts  as
in Watergate or Iran-Contra  can overcome long-maintained lies and
shake a corrupt government to its foundation.

Investigative reporting also can strip away the pleasing
façade of a deceptive leader or it can expose flaws in a conventional wisdom
that is taking the nation in a dangerous direction. Done right, investigative
journalism is a huge threat to powerful elites trying to manipulate a
population.

These are some of the reasons we have worked so hard over
the past decade to keep Consortiumnews.com going. It is also why a greater
capacity for producing independent investigative journalism is crucial for
changing todays U.S. political dynamic. [For what you can do to help,
click here.]

The 1970s

We can think back on how the journalistic process worked in
the 1970s: the Watergate scandal exposing Richard Nixons scheme for rigging the
political process, or the Pentagon Papers exposure of the lies that led the
nation to war in Vietnam, or the revelation of CIA abuses that showed how the
country was drifting toward a secret national security state.

Indeed, the disclosures of government wrongdoing in the
1970s represented a real and present danger to those leaders who favored the
transition of the United States from a democratic republic into a world empire
where the peoples consent is managed through the skillful use of images, fear
and myths.

The work of investigative journalists in the mid-1970s
represented such a threat to those who pulled the strings from the shadows that
a sustained counterattack was organized to punish independent-minded journalists
while also building a huge right-wing media echo chamber to drown out dissenting
information. [For details, see Robert Parrys
Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

Over the next decade, the Rights media strategy advanced
smartly, aided unintentionally by an inverse judgment by many influential
figures on the Left to downplay media in favor of more grassroots organizing.

While conservative funders poured hundreds of millions and
even billions of dollars into media outlets and think tanks, progressive funders
largely favored community organizing or direct action, such as feeding the
homeless and buying up endangered wetlands.

The Reagan Years

By the mid-1980s, the result of the conservative strategy
was being felt. The Rights defensive mechanisms put journalists and other
investigators on the defensive when they examined issues, such as death squads
in Central America, that put Ronald Reagan's policies in a negative light.

Career-minded reporters recognized how easy it was to get
marginalized as a liberal or  in the case of the Nicaragua conflict  as a
Sandinista sympathizer. Many journalists backed away from the career danger
and even joined the sniping at fellow reporters who insisted on pursuing
wrongdoing by the Reagan administration.

This dynamic was a major reason why the Iran-Contra abuses
festered for so long with only scattered reporting at outlets, such as the
Associated Press (where I worked) and the Miami Herald. Many of our colleagues
at prestige outlets, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, took a
walk on the scandal rather than tangle with Reagans aggressive neoconservative
operatives who were already on the rise.

Still, at AP, Brian Barger and I were able to uncover many
of the secrets about the White House support for the Nicaraguan contra rebels
waging war against the leftist Sandinista government. We also discovered that
some of the contra units were augmenting their war chests through drug
trafficking.

By 1986, this investigative reporting was threatening to
expose a web of criminality that implicated high-ranking officials of the Reagan
administration. But denials and intimidation  backed by the growing
conservative media apparatus  prevented anything like full disclosure. Oliver
North and other officials simply lied to official inquiries.

The dikes only burst when one of Norths supply planes was
shot down over Nicaragua on Oct. 5, 1986, and a Lebanese newspaper reported in
November 1986 that the White House was secretly selling weapons to Irans
Islamic fundamentalist government. When North was found to have diverted some
Iran profits to pay for contra supplies, the Iran-Contra scandal was born.

But the strength of the Rights media infrastructure and an
aggressive containment strategy by the White House limited the exposures and
spared Reagan administration officials from going to jail. Several of
Iran-Contras darkest corners  the contra-drug trafficking and secret
Republican contacts with Iran dating back to the 1980 presidential campaign 
never were seriously explored.

Phony Investigations

By the mid-1990s, past crimes by the Republicans were off
the medias radar scopes as the mainstream press joined the right-wing media in
obsessing over trivial Clinton scandals, such as the firing of White House
travel office employees and endless questions about Bill and Hillary Clintons
Whitewater real estate investment.

These stories represented a deformed version of
investigative journalism, essentially political attack operations masquerading
as investigative journalism. In short, they were a form of political dirty
trick.

Faced with the bleak media environment of 1995, we started
Consortiumnews.com as a way to publish well-reported stories of true
significance, what we considered old-fashioned investigative journalism, albeit
in the new medium of the Internet.

Some of our articles were about current events while others
pieced together key parts of recent American history. In the broadest sense, our
goal was to tell the real story of what happened to the United States since
World War II and how that often-secret history helped explain the troubling
present.

So, for instance, when five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme
Court stopped the Florida recount in December 2000 and handed George W. Bush the
White House, our readers werent surprised, knowing the history of how
ruthlessly Republicans had pursued control of the White House in the past. [See
the October
Surprise X-Files series or Parrys
Secrecy & Privilege.]

Our readers werent surprised either when Colin Powell
turned out to be a rank opportunist, as he exploited his sparkling reputation to
sell the Bush administrations puffed-up evidence about Iraqs supposed weapons
of mass destruction. [For Powells real background, see the Behind
Colin Powells Legend series.]

As the right-wing media bullied Americans who dissented
from Bushs pronouncements about Iraq, our readers already recognized the
intellectual corruption of a media infrastructure that had long been subsidized
by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, writing checks from his mysterious funding sources. [See
the Dark
Side of Rev. Moon series.]

The Iraq War

Knowing this history of intimidation and deception, we
werent swayed by the conventional wisdom about the Iraq War. We began warning
about the dangerous course that Bush was taking in the days after the Sept. 11,
2001, terror attacks.

Much of that skepticism about the Iraq War has been borne
out by recent disclosures, such as the Downing Street Memos, which were
uncovered not by major American news organizations but by correspondent Michael
Smith of the London Times. Indeed, some big U.S. news outlets
denigrated the British revelation that the Bush administration had fixed
the intelligence for the Iraq War around shaky WMD claims.

But that so many of the Consortiumnews.com articles turned
out to be on target was not the result of some magical insights; it was the
consequence of serious research and the skepticism that once was bred into
American investigative reporters.

For the United States to pull itself out of todays swamp
of misinformation will require a restoration of that ethos of investigative
journalism as well as construction of a delivery mechanism to get solid
reporting on key topics to the American people.

There has been some progress with the emergence of
progressive talk radio and Internet sites that recycle good stories from the
international news media. But there is a desperate need for a much greater
capacity for independent investigative journalism.

[Right now, Consortiumnews.com relies entirely on donations
from readers. If you can afford to make a tax-deductible contribution, please
click here. If you or a
friend are involved with a foundation or a funding organization like Working
Assets, please consider recommending us for support. For details,
click here.]

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from
Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at
secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine,
the Press & 'Project Truth.'